Sin and Spirituality

Second Sunday after Epiphany

Sunday, January 18 2009

1 Samuel 3:1-20

Psalm 139
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

This weekend was the council retreat at St. Emma’s retreat center, just outside of town.  It was the first time I’d ever seen a nun in a full black habit in person and not on TV, which was interesting.  I admit I was a bit freaked out by the crucifix in my room-instead of having Jesus flat against the cross like on most crucifixes, the one in my room had a Jesus who was hanging forward off the cross, head hanging down.  Given the position and size of the crucifix and the position of the bed, Jesus was staring right down at the pillow.  I slept on the other side of the bed.  I was glad I went.  It was a productive meeting, both in terms of what got accomplished and as a way of helping us come together as a group, so that the next year can continue to be productive.

What happens in Corinth, stays in Corinth.  It was the Las Vegas of the ancient world, the sin city of its day.  Everything was available in Corinth, one way or another, no matter how immoral or unethical it was.  And everyone knew it.  It’s no wonder that Paul had more problems with the Corinthians than any other church he founded.  Paul preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them.  He told them that as Christians, all of our sins are forgiven and we have been saved by the cross of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus.  The power of the law and sin and death have been broken, and we are free.  This is good news, indeed.

The Corinthians took this to mean that they could do whatever they wanted, and take advantage of all the things that Corinth had to offer.  They didn’t have to answer to the Law, any more; no worrying about consequences, it’s all been taken care of.  After all, God would forgive anything.  They wanted to do whatever they wanted, do what felt good and satisfied their cravings, what titillated them, and leave the mess and the consequences to God.  They wanted to be able to ignore God all week, come in for an hour Sunday morning, and go right back to ignoring everything that God was doing.  Surely, they said, it wasn’t like they were being that bad, was it?  Everyone ate meat sacrificed to idols, it was everywhere.  So were prostitutes.  So were a lot of other ways to sin.

I can just hear them saying it: everyone does it.  It’s not that big a deal.  It’s not that bad.  I enjoy it, so it must be good.  God doesn’t really mind that much.  God loves me anyway, so why should I care?  A thousand justifications for doing things all the things they knew they shouldn’t do.  It’s not so different from today, really.  There are so many things out there that we know we shouldn’t do, that seem so tempting.  Doing drugs, having affairs, cheating … it seems like everywhere we look, people are doing sinful things.  It makes it very easy to find excuses for our own behavior.  We are God’s people, but God seems very far away sometimes.  With all the terrible things happening in the world today, surely God has more important things to do than keep track of every little sin.  So why worry about it?

Paul didn’t accept those excuses, and neither should we.  The thing about sin is, it makes us focus in on ourselves to the exclusion of all else.  That’s what all sin has in common, at its heart-sin makes us concentrate on our own fears and pleasures, makes us concentrate so much on ourselves that we can’t truly see the people around us.  Sin blinds us to the pain we cause ourselves and others with our actions.  God wants us to be healthy, and happy, and whole, in right relationships with him and all of our fellow human beings.  Sin gets in the way.  Even little sins like jealousy can fray our relationships with those around us.

Our bodies were created as gifts from God.  God the Father created them, Jesus Christ redeemed them through his life, death, and resurrection, and the Holy Spirit sanctifies us this day and always.  But like all of God’s gifts, our bodies can be used in sinful ways.  Addictions focus us inward, to the exclusion of all the people around us, harming our relationships with them and destroying the body God has given and redeemed.  Adultery exchanges momentary pleasure for a long-lasting breakdown of our relationships with those we are closest to while cheapening the gift God gave us.

There are so many ways to sin, so many ways to take God’s gifts and turn them to wrong uses.  Christ Jesus redeemed us from our sins, broke the power of sin, and still like the Corinthians we slip back into old habits, needing Christ’s presence and renewing forgiveness constantly in our lives.  Why do we do it?  What makes us unable to walk the straight and narrow path all our lives?  What makes us stumble, and choose to go astray?

Humans need God in our lives.  Every culture in history has had religion in one form or another.  We have a hunger to connect with the divine.  We want to be truly known and accepted, we want to feel transcendent joy.  We are afraid of being alone and depressed.  In seminary I read a book written in the 1950’s in which the author predicted that modernism and rationalism would mean the end of religion.  Boy, was he ever wrong.  In America today, many people are turning away from Christianity … but they’re turning towards psychics and paganism and new-age mysticism and other alternatives; some even make science into a religion.  They’re still looking for God, even if they don’t want Christianity.

Have you ever heard that song, “Looking for love in all the wrong places”?  When that hunger for the divine goes unfulfilled, that’s what we do.  We look for God in all the wrong places.  When we can’t see God where we look for him, when building relationships with God and our fellow human beings is too much effort, when we don’t want to put in the effort or don’t think it’s worth it, we turn to other things that we think can make us happy.  Sex, intoxicants, music, food, television and movies, anything that can entertain us, draw us out of ourselves, make us feel good, and distract ourselves from what’s really wrong, even if only for a little while.  We pursue them even at the cost of true and lasting relationships with our friends and family, even at the cost of the relationship with God we truly crave.  And so we tell ourselves comforting lies that it’s not really that bad, and everybody does it, and it doesn’t really matter anyway, and turn away from God’s love and salvation.  There are other reasons to sin, of course, but trying to fill the deep need for God’s grace is one of the main reasons.  And the problem is, nothing we do on our own to seek God or to distract ourselves from our spiritual emptiness can ever work.

You see, God is the one who searches us out, not the other way around.  Our Lord is the one who came to Samuel as he lay sleeping, to wake him up and give him the Word.  Our Lord is the one who found Phillip and commanded him to follow, who saw Nathaniel under the fig tree.  Our Lord is the one who searches us out and knows us, our sitting down and our rising up, our journeys and our resting places.  Our Lord is the one who created us, and knew us from conception to this moment now to all points in the future.  Our Lord is the one who knows all our deepest thoughts, who loves us even when we sin, and handed himself over to death on a cross to save us and make us clean and renewed.  Our Lord is the one who empties himself, that we might be filled.  Our Lord is the one who chose to manifest his grace through pain, and suffering.

The cross through which Christ comes to us is not a pretty sight.  It’s not glorious.  It’s not sweet and gentle.  It’s not comfortable.  It is, in fact, pretty freaky and disturbing when we really think about it.  At St. Emma’s two nights ago, I tried to avoid that big crucifix as best I could because it made me uncomfortable.  In a less literal way, we don’t want to have to think about what it means that God seeks us out, that God uses things like the cross to do his work, so we try and go out and find what God does that’s more comfortable to us, more appealing.

The problem is, when we go out looking for God, we sometimes get so caught up in what we think we want that we miss Christ’s presence and power in our lives.  We can’t see the God who created us and redeems us and knows us on the deepest level because we’re too busy looking for a God that looks like we want him to.  We turn inward to our own hopes and fears and try to find a god who matches them.  And we fill up the emptiness we feel by doing all the destructive things we know we shouldn’t, distracting ourselves with pleasures that bring a short time of enjoyment at the cost of our relationships with God and one another.

Yes, we have been freed from sin by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Yes, he forgives us all our sins.  But that doesn’t mean we have free reign to go out there and do whatever we want.  When Christ saved us, he made us whole at the cost of his own life.  That’s a precious, awesome gift, and one we shouldn’t take for granted.  We have been called to follow Christ.  We should do so in ways that glorify God, not our own appetites, trusting in Christ to catch us when we fall.

Why worship?

I apologize for the long delay between updates–there were travel woes and a mission trip and computer problems all working together to prevent my weekly updates.

Why do we worship God?  I’m not asking why we believe in God; that’s a different question.  Why do we worship God?  Why go to church?  Why repeat ceremonies every week, why put so much importance on once-in-a-lifetime rituals such as Baptism?  Why follow the same rituals that our ancestors did, when the world seems to be changing so much so fast?  Christianity, after all, is not an “orthoprax” religion; righteousness is not based on performing the correct rituals.  Christianity is “orthodox”–righteousness and salvation depend on correct belief.  Although our faith should be acted out in our lives, the focus is on right belief rather than right action.  So why do we go to church?

This question struck me with particular force the Sunday after Christmas.  On Christmas Eve, the church is filled to the rafters.  But the Sunday afterwards, less than half the people who were there for Christmas attend services.  Many people only come to church twice a year, on Christmas and Easter.  These days the only churches that seem to be growing are the ones where worship is an entertainment experience, with praise bands and multimedia presentations and nothing more required of their members than to sit back and enjoy the show.  People complain that worship in mainline churches is boring, that it’s the same thing every week, that there’s not enough excitement.  We have been conditioned to expect things to come in sound bites, and become impatient when they’re not served up to us easily.  They’re not looking for worship, they’re looking for entertainment.  But what is the difference, and why is it important?

I think the fundamental difference is in the focus.  When we truly worship God, we are focused on God and God’s desires, not our own.  When we are entertained, we are focusing on our own wishes.  But the more we focus on our own wishes, our own desires, the more we turn in on ourselves.  We stop looking outward at other people, and so become selfish and isolated.  When all we search for is our own gratification, we have no time or attention to build true and lasting relationships with anyone, whether that is with God or with with other people.  With so much focus on ourselves and our desires in our culture today, worship is a regular time to build up our relationship with God, to remember that God is working in our lives, and that God’s plans are deeper and wider than our own convenience and petty wants.  Yes, our faith in God is more important than ritual; but the rituals help us see in concrete ways that we are a part of God’s family, and that God is a part of our life.  It is our faith that makes us Christian, not our actions, but it is our actions that show that faith is more than mere words.  It is our actions that remind us, in a tangible form, that our faith matters, to us and to the world around us.  Our relationship with God is not academic, not based only in our thoughts.  It’s not something to be put off to the future, it’s something that sustains us and guides us through good times and bad.  Worship is one of the ways we remember and enact this.

If you have any topics or questions you would like me  to address, please comment.

Sermon: Christ the King

Sorry for posting this a week late, but I was a bit busy with Thanksgiving last week.

Christ the King

Sunday, November 23 2008

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Psalm 95
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

MP3 of Sermon.  Bulletin.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today is the last Sunday of the church year; next week is the first Sunday of Advent, when we begin preparations for the coming of our Lord.  Today, we celebrate the fact that Jesus Christ is our King, ruler of heaven and earth.  We are citizens of two worlds, of this world we live in now and of the world to come, when Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead.  Jesus Christ is Lord of all.  Jesus Christ is the king of both heaven and earth.  It’s easy to imagine Christ as King of heaven, where he reigns in glory with angels and pearly gates and all that.  It’s a lot harder to imagine Christ as king of this world we live in today.

What does it mean that Christ is King?  What kind of a King is he?  When I think of kings in this world, I think of grand castles and historic wars and riches and crown jewels locked safely behind glass.  Most kings in the world today are ceremonial figureheads, like Queen Elizabeth of England.  She comes out, she waves at crowds, she makes speeches, she travels the world, but in the end the country she rules is actually governed by elected officials in Parliament.  Then there are all the kings in history, who actually did rule their people.  Some were good, some were bad, but all had flaws when you take a close look at them.  They favored the rights of the rich and powerful and ignored the needs of the poor, they played favorites, they started stupid and tragic wars, they lived in lavish palaces while the majority of their people lived in squalor and filth, they had so much power and wealth and used it to get more power and wealth.  Even David and Solomon, the two greatest kings in the Bible, had significant problems.  David’s adultery and poor parenting skills caused a vicious civil war, and his son Solomon the Wise raised taxes and forced labor levies so high to pay for his building projects that on his death the kingdom of Israel-God’s chosen people-were permanently split in two.  That split never healed because a few centuries of rule by bad kings later, the Northern Kingdom was conquered by Assyria and taken off as captives and was never heard from again.  If that’s the legacy of a good king, well, I can see why our forefathers rebelled and threw out the English king in favor of a democratic government.  It’s hard to imagine a king being a good thing, hard to think of Christ as a king, when you think of all the bad things kings have done.

Except our democratically-elected political leaders don’t have that great a track record, either.  Washington, Jefferson, and the rest of the founding fathers owned slaves and left in place a system of slavery that was horribly unjust and cruel and caused a massive civil war for their children and grandchildren to fight.  Lincoln had no plans for the future besides winning the Civil War, and his lack of planning led to problems with Reconstruction after his death.  Our presidents have a better track run over the long term than the kings and queens of many other nations, but that’s not saying much.  All leaders of nations, whatever they call themselves and however they came to power, have fallen short of their promises and caused problems for their people.  Yet they keep making new promises about what they’re going to accomplish as leaders, each promise more lavish than the rest.  And we follow them, hoping they’ll fix all the things that are wrong with the world, all the mistakes their predecessors made.  We hope they’ll make things better for us, make a better world, fix the wrongs and injustices that affect our daily lives and prevent new ones from occurring.

On November 5, the day after the recent election, I visited a few shut-ins, and the conversation naturally turned to politics.  The Obama supporters spoke as if Obama was a savior who would right all the wrongs in America and in the world.  The McCain supporters spoke as if America was doomed and would crumble and fall within the next four years.  Now, politics is a touchy and dangerous subject for any pastor to discuss with parishioners, and I’m not quite comfortable yet with where the boundaries are.  But one thing I know for sure is that no matter which political party won this or any election, no matter which candidate is installed in office, the world is in God’s hands and will always be in God’s hands, difficult as that can be to remember at times.  And so we come back to the question: what does it mean that Christ is King of this world as well as the next?

In the first lesson, the leaders of the world-particularly the kings of Israel and Judah-have failed at their task as leaders and shepherds of their people.  The people are scattered and divided, the rich have gotten greedy and the poor have gotten trampled.  There is no justice anywhere.  The ones with God-given gifts to take care of and protect others have used those gifts to make themselves even richer and stronger at the expense of the ones they’re supposed to be protecting.  It’s not their riches God objects to-it’s the way they’ve used those riches to do the exact opposite of what they should be doing.  The result?  Everyone has suffered.  The nation has been conquered by foreigners and everyone-rich and poor alike-has been carried off into exile.  God sent the prophet Ezekiel to bring comfort: exile is not permanent.  The injustices that plague Israel will be redressed, and a new shepherd, a new king, will be given to lead them.  This king, however, will not be like their old leaders who brought them to this low point.  This new David will be a true shepherd-he will take care of the people with justice, and both rich and poor will be fed and protected and cared for.  This new David is Christ, the Messiah, king of heaven and earth.  What does it mean that Christ is King?  Christ is not just a ceremonial king, there to be brought out for rituals and holidays and ignored the rest of the time.  He has true power of both judgment and protection.  Christ’s kingship means that the old way of doing things, the way of life in which value is calculated by riches and power, will come to an end.  In its place will come a world in which all people are valued, in which everyone gets a fair chance and all will be cared for.  Christ’s kingship means that justice isn’t about who’s got the biggest army or the most money, and it means that no matter how bad things seem to be now, this world is not the end.

But justice can’t happen without judgment, and that means that injustices can’t be swept away under the rug or excused as simply the way things are.  People need to be held accountable for the things they’ve done, good and bad.  God’s justice can’t be bribed, or swayed by politics, or biased in any way.  God knows what is in our hearts and minds, God knows what we’ve done even better than we do, and God will judge everyone with greater justice than any human court could ever hope to do.  Let me repeat that: God will judge.  Not us, God.

In the second lesson, Jesus talks about the judgment that will happen when he comes again.  The story is simple: everyone will be judged and sorted into two groups.  The ones who are righteous-the sheep-will go into the Kingdom of heaven, and those who are not righteous-the goats-will be sent away to eternal punishment.  This parable is pretty well known.  It’s a common subject of sermons and Bible study classes.  It’s an excellent way to show what God’s justice looks like: when we see someone in trouble, and we have the power to help, we should do it.  We see the face of God not in the kings and rulers and powerful and wealthy of this world, but in those who are the most vulnerable.  We see the face of God in people who are hungry, thirsty, alone, naked, sick, imprisoned.  We have been given many gifts, not just of money but of time and talents as well, and we should use them to take care of those who honestly cannot take care of themselves.  This is what Christ our King commands.  This is the standard against which he will judge us.

And again I point out: the standard against which Christ will judge us, not the standard we will use to judge others.  Here’s what most people miss when they read this parable: the sheep don’t think they’re sheep and the goats don’t think they’re goats.  The sheep are honestly surprised to hear that they’ve been serving Christ in their daily lives, and the goats honestly can’t think of a time when they haven’t served.  The problem is that the goats were serving the wrong things-and didn’t know it.  They got so caught up in what they thought needed to be done, they forgot to ask what God thought needed to be done, and how God wanted them to go about doing it.

It’s kind of like when I was a kid and I would take care of my younger brother on Saturdays while Mom and Dad were at work.  We had a list of chores to accomplish, and it was my responsibility to see to it the chores got done and that we both did our fair share.  Now, I was a fairly bossy girl, and my brother has always been laid back, and so normally he’d just go along with whatever I told him to do, and normally I tried to divide things relatively equally.  But sometimes I’d get so caught up in the fact that I was in charge that I would try to make my brother do a lot more than his fair share-and then try and micromanage how he did it.  Well, I never got away with it for very long-eventually, even my laid-back brother would call Mom and Dad to complain, and I would get in trouble.  Even if the chores got done like Mom and Dad wanted, they didn’t get done how Mom and Dad wanted when I made my brother do most of the work, and they got done in ways that harmed the relationship between myself and my brother.  Just as it was easy for me to think I was doing what my parents wanted by bossing my brother around and making him do most of the work, it’s easy for us to arrange things the way we want them and justify it by thinking we’re doing what God wants.  It’s easy to fall back into the habits of power-seeking, of seeing things through the eyes of this world instead of through the eyes of Christ, and not even realize we’re doing it.

That’s a scary thought.  If it’s that easy to forget about the true justice of Christ, if we can honestly think we’re serving God when we really aren’t, what’s to stop us from being goats?  How can we make sure we’re headed for eternal life rather than eternal punishment?  We do our best, but what if that isn’t enough?  Well, the bad news is, our best isn’t enough and there’s no way we can make sure we’re sheep and not goats.  We can’t judge anyone, not ourselves, not others.  The power of judgment belongs exclusively to Christ our King, who isn’t blinded by power and money and all the things we use to decide status.  But the good news is that Christ exercises that judgment along with mercy, in grace and love.  Christ uses his kingship for protection and care.  As sinners, we stand condemned before the throne.  But Christ loves us still.  And that is where we place our trust and our hope of salvation, not in our deeds that often go wrong, but in the grace of God.

Jesus Christ is our king both in this world and the next.  Doing good things isn’t just about salvation.  We do good works because our God and King desires justice in this world, and mercy, and he wants to work through us to accomplish it.  We do good works because our God cares just as much about the weak as he does the strong.  Christ can be seen in the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked, the sick, the dying.  The world may have forgotten them, but God hasn’t.  And neither should we.

Jesus Christ is Lord of all.  The rulers of this world have the power of laws and armies and bureaucracy in their control, but Christ is still the one in ultimate control.  Things may seem grim or depressing when we see all that’s wrong with the world, all the things that we as human beings have done wrong.  But Christ doesn’t exercise that power through a show of riches and might.  He rules by bringing justice and grace to the world, to those who need it the most.  He rules by gathering up the lost and forsaken, by being a good shepherd to his people.  Thanks be to God.

Since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.  22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom,  23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,  24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.  26 Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;  28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are,  29 so that no one might boast in the presence of God.  30 He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,  31 in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:21-31)

Paul divides the world up into two categories in this passage: the “Jews” who want signs of God’s power to prove his existence and their own righteousness, and the “Greeks” who want to prove God’s existence through wisdom, which they can then use to enhance their standing in society (“wisdom” being highly valuable in Greek culture).  Now, obviously our world does not fall into the neat ethnic categories of Jew and Greek today … but the two basic mindsets of how people approach religion are still much the same.  People generally want religion for one of two reasons.  Either they want a sign of God’s power (preferably one that benefits them in some way–wealth, healing, political or military power, etc.) or they want some special wisdom that will enlighten them, help them climb up the path to heaven.  (Remember when I talked about up religion and down religion?  These are the two main forms of up religion.)

But God the deepest and most powerful way in which God shows Godself to us is not through great wisdom and great power (or, at least, not what the world counts as great wisdom and great power).  God came down to earth and took on human form.  Then he allowed himself to be arrested for a crime he was innocent of, and died one of the most gruesome deaths imaginable, naked and broken for all the world to see.  This does not look like power, and it does not look like wisdom.  At least not what we think of as power and wisdom.

Yet through that cross, through that weakness, that foolishness, God broke the power of sin and death and the hold it had over the world.  This is the way God works in the world: through weakness and foolishness, things that we humans would normally try to avoid at all costs.  The cross is what God’s power and wisdom truly look like.  So if we truly want to see and experience God’s power and wisdom, we can’t rely on our own views of what power and wisdom should look like.  We need to let God show us what “Christ crucified” looks like in the 21st century.  We need to stop boasting in ourselves or the things we think we can get from God, and start paying attention instead to what God is doing in us and through us in things that look weak and foolish.

We need to start seeing every person through the lens of the cross.

Law and Gospel: living in the tension between sin and salvation

We Christians talk a lot about the Gospel.  It’s a term so basic we don’t often stop to define what we mean when we say it, but let’s take the time now.  “Gospel” can actually mean two things: first and most obviously, the four Gospels are the four books of the Bible that chronicle the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  But there’s a deeper meaning.  “Gospel” literally comes from an old English word meaning “Good News.”  “Evangelism” is derived from an old Greek word meaning “Good News.”  On a fundamental level, the Gospel is the Good News that God loves us and wants to save us from our sins, to make us happy and healthy and whole and in a right relationship with God and with our fellow human beings.  Gospel, then can be found in more places in the Bible than just the four Gospels.  The Gospel can be found in every single book in the Bible, from Genesis through Revelation.  (“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” Isaiah 40:1, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Genesis 28:15, etc.)

But there’s more in the Bible than just Gospel.  Before you can talk about the need for healing, you have to understand that you’re sick.  Before you can see the need for salvation, you have to be able to see sin.  That’s where the other thing in the Bible comes in: the Law.  The Law is the stuff that points out just how far short we fall of the life God intends for us.  The Law is not just the legal codes in Leviticus and other places in the Old Testament.  Just as there is Gospel in the Old Testament, there is also Law in the New Testament.  The parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids in Matthew 25:1-13 is a good example.  The bridesmaids were to meet the groom with lamps lit.  Five brought enough oil, five didn’t.  The groom was delayed.  The five who ran out of oil left to find more, and when they came back they found they had missed the bridegroom’s coming and were not allowed to enter the wedding.  It’s an allegory for the coming of the kingdom of God, and the message is that if you’re not prepared, you don’t get to come in.  After two thousand years of waiting, how many of us are truly ready for the coming of God?  This passage is law because it points out to us just how unready we are for God’s coming into our lives, and because the redeeming mercy of God is not shown to the bridesmaids who weren’t ready.  Will there be mercy?  Yes, because God is a merciful God.  But before there can be mercy, there must be the recognition of a need for it.  The Law convicts us, and the Gospel saves us.

We are redeemed by God’s love manifest in Christ Jesus.  But sin is the default condition of the world and everyone in it, and this will be the case until Christ comes again.  We still sin, every day, which is why we still need God’s love and forgiveness.  We are saints–people made holy by God–who are also sinners.  If we forget that we are saints, we turn away from God in despair at our brokenness.  If we forget we are sinners, we turn away from God because we think we can rely on our own merit, and we become self-righteous hypocrites who condemn sin in others without recognizing it in ourselves.

We need both law and gospel.  We need the law to remind us of our need for God, and we need the Gospel to remind us that God answers our needs.

If you have any questions about this article, or any aspect of Christianity, please comment and I will address the question next week.

A note on politics and religion

For those of you who are Americans, yesterday was election day.  It was a big election, with a lot at stake.  Some people are claiming the nation has been saved; others claim the nation is doomed.  Many people are somewhere in the middle.  Whereever you fall on the spectrum, remember this: Jesus Christ is Lord of All.  That was true yesterday, it is true today, and it will be true tomorrow and every day that comes after.

All nations will crumble to dust in the end.  All politicians will eventually be forgotten.  God will still be God.  I love America, and I participate in the political life of the country.  I hope and pray that America will continue to be a great nation for many centuries to come.  But no matter what happens, my trust is in God.

Up and Down religion

You know what the most common theological problem among Christians is?  It’s that, without realizing it, we all tend to twist our religion into something about us, that despite its trappings has very little to do with our lord and savior Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

We are slaves to sin.  This is not something we want to admit to anyone, least of all ourselves.  We want to believe that we are fundamentally in control of our own lives and our own destinies.  We want to believe that we can get into heaven on our own merit.  This is “up religion” because We want to believe we can climb up to heaven by ourselves.  Even if we can’t control everything, we want to control what we can–there’s an old slogan, “Do your best and let God do the rest.”  In other words, most of it rests on us–God just fills in the gaps between what we can do and what we can’t.  To make ourselves feel better about our failures, we look around us for people who fail more often than we do, so that we can say “Well, at least I’m better than them.”  It leads to works righteousness, the belief that we can create a right relationship with God and with the world around us (be righteous) by doing good works to make up for any sin we might do.  It also leads us to turn our focus into our self, a kind of theological navel-gazing.  It’s about what we want, not about what God wants.

The problem with “up religion” is that however much we might like the idea, it doesn’t fit what we know of God.  God’s deepest and most fundamental relationship with humanity is through Christ Jesus–who did not stay up in heaven and invite us up, but came down to meet us and promised to be with us always down here on Earth in our daily life.  Christ Jesus became an ordinary human, and he took our sins on himself through crucifixion–the messiest, most painful, most shameful death imaginable to the time and place he lived.  We are sinners and we can’t do enough good to balance out our sin, but God loves us anyway.  We cannot climb up to heaven–and if we do, all we will find is a distorted mirror of our own desires, a god made in our image.  Instead, God comes down to us and claims us as we are.  We cannot go out to find God, but God does come to find us.  We can shut God out of our lives, but we cannot bring him in by our own efforts.

So how do we keep from slipping into an “up” religion?  First, be aware of the difference.  When you think about anything related to God or religion, ask yourself if you’re thinking about it in an “up” way or a “down” way.  Is it about you, or is it about God?  Are you leaving space for God to work in you and in your life?  Do you accept the fact that you are not the one in control of your life?  You won’t be perfectly open to this all the time; all have sinned, remember, and “up” religion is one of the most natural heresies to slip into.  But that’s okay.  God loves you anyway.

On righteousness

Reformation Sunday

Sunday, October 26

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today is Reformation Sunday. Four hundred and ninety-one years ago this Friday, Martin Luther nailed a list of ninety-five things he thought the church was doing wrong on the church door in Wittenburg, hoping initially only for a theological debate that might reform the church he served. The lessons for today are taken from those texts that were especially valuable to Luther in his realization that the theology of the medieval Roman Catholic church had serious problems in need of reformation. We celebrate this day as a festival of the church to remind ourselves that since the church is made up of humans who have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, it is in constant need of reformation and renewal.

There is a question in the readings today. It stands behind Jeremiah’s vision of the future, and behind Paul’s vision of what Christ has done and is doing in our midst, and behind Jesus’ rebuke of the Jews who had believed in him. The question is this: we are all sinners, so how do we get a right relationship with God?

Israel had been created and formed by God throughout its entire history, and yet by Jeremiah’s day they had strayed so far from the path God taught them that they were destroyed. God was with them in their suffering and promised to rebuild them, but Jeremiah wanted to know what was to keep them from going so far astray a second time? God’s answer was a new covenant, in which God’s commands, God’s words, weren’t just something heard during worship but were so deeply a part of the community of believers that they could never be forgotten or discarded again. Not just the rules and regulations, but knowledge of how to live a happy, healthy, whole life in community with God and with all believers. This new covenant would be given not because they earned it or deserved it, but because they needed it. This gift from God is what would save Israel from another destruction and exile.

Centuries later, the new covenant was created in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul wrote a letter to the church in Rome explaining what that meant not just for Jews but for everyone, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. No amount of external rules and regulations can keep us safe from sin. Even though we try our hardest to make up for it by following the laws as best we can, we can’t possibly do enough good works to earn our own salvation. The good news of Christ Jesus is that God loves us anyway, and created a new covenant with us to save us. Jesus took the punishment for our sins as his own, and suffered and died so that we would not have to. As baptized children of God, we are tied to his death and resurrection, and through his sacrifice we are given freedom and grace. Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit live within us and surround us, showing us how to life happy, healthy, whole lives in community with God and with all believers. We have nothing to boast about; it’s not our own actions or beliefs that save us but God’s actions and the faith he gives us.

It’s a wonderful thing, to be saved by God. Unfortunately, we often take that salvation for granted. We have been claimed and saved by God, but we aren’t perfect. The final destruction of sin and death won’t happen until Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead. Until that time, we are caught in between sin and salvation, unable to free ourselves from bondage to sin and yet constantly claimed and forgiven by God, renewed in faith and life. We are, in Luther’s words, both saint and sinner at the same time. Being both saint and sinner is not a comfortable thing to be. We don’t like to think of ourselves as sinners; we prefer to focus on our good deeds, on God’s love for us, and forget the bad things we do. I was participating in a bible study two years ago, when a woman said she didn’t see why we had to start every service with the confession and forgiveness—after all, she wasn’t a sinner, she was a good woman who followed the ten commandments and took care of her family and worked hard, so why should she have to confess anything?

I didn’t quite know what to say. I mean, I know that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but at the same time I understood where she was coming from. I don’t worship other gods, I don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, I worship on Sundays, I honor my parents, I don’t kill, I don’t commit adultery, I don’t steal, I don’t lie, and I do my best never to covet anything. I’m not perfect, but it sure seems like I’ve got the major stuff covered, right? And there are a lot of people out there, many of them in this church right now, who could say the same thing. It’s so easy to start thinking like the Jews who believed in Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson. “I’m a child of God, who follows the commandments and isn’t a slave to sin. What do you mean ‘you will be made free’? What have I done that needs saving?” And yet, according to Paul, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, including me and everyone else who does their best to obey the commandments. What are we doing wrong?

Let’s start from the beginning. The first commandment says “You shall have no other gods but me.” It sounds easy enough. Who here has ever worshipped, say, Buddha? That’s easy enough to avoid. But considering that today is Reformation Sunday, let’s check out what Luther has to say. In the section on the first commandment in the Large Catechism, Luther asks this question: what does it mean to have a god? Think about it. What does it mean to have a god? Besides the obvious things like coming to church on Sundays, how does believing in God and being a Christian affect you and your daily life? According to Luther, a “god” is what we look to for all good and in which we find refuge in all need. To have a god is … to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. And that’s the problem, the thing that makes the first commandment so very difficult to follow no matter how good we think we’re being. We may not consciously worship other gods, but it’s very easy to slip into trusting something in this world that we can see and hear and touch more than we trust God.

For me, I know I’m a smart, competent woman. The temptation for me is to put my trust in my own abilities and intelligence, instead of in God. I can think my way out of most problems: figure out what’s wrong, figure out how to fix it, and go out and do what needs to be done. I believe in God, but I also believe I can handle most things. When I need something, when I have a problem, my first instinct isn’t to turn to God for help and guidance, it’s to look for what I can do to fix it. And I never realized how little trust I had in God until I spent last summer working as a chaplain at a mental hospital. You see, the thing about mental illness severe enough to need hospitalization is that you can’t fix it. You can’t think your way through it. Even with the best medication and counseling available to them, the people in that hospital will have to struggle with their illness for the rest of their lives. There was nothing I could do to fix them, or help them fix themselves. Going there ever day, knowing I could do nothing, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. It forced me to realize just how much I relied on myself and how little I relied on God. As the summer went on, I had to learn to open myself to the possibility of God working in and through me and in the lives of the staff and patients at that hospital, and put my faith and trust in God instead of in myself. I could not help them. But God could.

Self-reliance is one form of idolatry that Americans are particularly prone to, but not the only one. Look at the political campaigns going on in our country right now. Both sides believe that if they are elected they can fix all the problems in America. Their ultimate trust and faith is in their ideology and political proposals. Or how about money? If there’s one thing that the marked fluctuations and economic problems of the past few weeks have proven, it’s that there are a lot of Americans who put their ultimate faith and trust in the economy instead of in God. To listen to people talk, in our community and in the national news, you would have thought the whole world was coming to an end. What will we do if our investments aren’t worth as much? What will we do if we don’t get a raise this year? What will we do if we don’t have the money to take the vacation we wanted? What will we do if we get laid off? How will we live? As a culture, our love of money and financial security has become the driving force in our lives. Let me be very clear here: being smart, or interested in politics, or having money are not the problem. The problem is when we put more trust in our abilities, politics, and money than we do in God.

The question in today’s lessons is the question for our age as well. I’ve only talked about one of the commandments today, but when you truly look at each of the commandments, at the spirit of the law and not just the letter of it, each one is just as difficult to follow. Paul was right. We are all sinners. We are all slaves to sin. If we can’t even keep the first commandment, how can we possibly make a right relationship with God and our fellow believers?

The answer is simple. We can’t. But God can. We are slaves to sin, but if the son of God makes us free then we are free indeed. God has made a new covenant with us, a new promise, to be our God and make us God’s people. Through Jesus Christ our sins have been forgiven and we have been made whole. Not because we’ve earned it—we haven’t—but because God loves us in spite of our sin and loves us no matter what we do. The God who created us and gave us every good thing in the world, the God we turn away from every day with each sin, loves us enough to die for our sake that we might be saved even though we are still sinners. This is a gift we could never earn, and we cannot pay back. The only thing we can do is rejoice, and open our hearts and minds to the presence of God in us and among us, and allow ourselves to be re-formed in God’s image and in God’s steadfast love.

Give to God the things that are God’s

I know I’ve talked a lot about money and God and stewardship lately, but the text this last Sunday was so perfectly on that topic that I had to speak on it. Next week will be on a different topic, I promise.

Matthew 22:15-22

‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ It sounds fairly simple. Yes, Christians are to pay taxes and be good citizens, while at the same time staying faithful to God. You might say we have dual citizenship—we are citizens of our country here on earth while at the same time we are also citizens of God’s kingdom, which will be fulfilled on earth when he comes again. We need to be good citizens of both heaven and earth, and that means participating in all just requirements of citizenship in our earthly country, including taxes.
But there’s more to this passage than simple advice to be good citizens of both kingdoms. ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ There’s a lot of political debate in our country about what and how much should be taxed, how much should be “given to the Emperor” in the words of today’s lesson, and just about everyone I know has a strong opinion on the subject one way or the other. Here’s something we don’t think about as often: what should be given to God? I know that time and talent sheets have been mailed out, so you’ve probably given this a little bit more thought recently than you usually would. Here’s something to keep in mind.

Jesus divides it up that if it belongs to the emperor, it should go to the emperor, and if it belongs to God it should go to God. But wait a minute. Doesn’t everything belong to God? God created heaven and earth. God created everything, from the planet we live on to the stars and sun that shine above us, to the plants and animals we share the planet with, to our very lives. God created us and everything around us. Everything we have, from our lives to our families to our possessions, is a gift from God. Our salvation through Jesus Christ, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst, the faith that brought us here today and sustains us through our lives, all are God’s gifts to us. We acknowledge this in our offering prayer, but have you ever really stopped to think about what that means?

We like to think we’ve earned everything we get. Study hard in school, work hard at your job, and you’ll get ahead and earn money to buy things with. But the intelligence that helped us learn and the health that helps us work are both gifts from God, for our use. And the things we buy with our money were all made from resources God has given us. The fabric in our clothing comes from plants and animals created by God, the metal in our cars comes from the planet created by God, the plastics that are in just about everything these days were created from materials given by God using knowledge gained by chemists using the intelligence God gave them. Everything we have comes from God, one way or another. And we have so much.

The Pharisees knew that everything comes from God. That’s what they based their question on—the Romans were foreign overlords who wanted them to worship Roman gods. They didn’t think it was lawful to give anything that belonged to God—including the money for the tax—to the people who ruled them and didn’t want them to remain faithful to God. But at the same time, they were looking at the whole thing from a purely political standpoint, as if God were merely a rival king and paying taxes to his rival were treason. They missed the deeper truth that God is not a petty ruler looking to consolidate his power at the expense of everyone else’s. God gives us everything he gives us because he loves us and wants us to have an abundant life, and he wants us to learn to love and share that abundance he has given us. Giving to God is not just about paying your share of the church’s bills, it’s about taking care of the people all around us, sharing our abundance so that all of God’s children here and around the world can live happy and healthy lives.

When we forget that everything comes from God, when we think of everything we have as things we earned on our own, it’s harder to be generous. We worry about not having enough, about not earning enough and saving enough, particularly when the economy is troubled. So when we do give things to others, we base it on needs and expectations. The church needs to make its operating budget and we are expected to contribute so we figure out what we can comfortably spare. The school band needs money for new uniforms, and we are expected to support them so we buy a sandwich or two. We do what we need to do to stay members of the community in good standing. It’s not bad, but it’s not particularly good, either.

Give to God the things that are God’s. When you find yourself having trouble with that, remember this: Everything in heaven and on earth belongs to God, and God has given to us everything we have. God will continue to give to us, though perhaps not always in the ways and quantities he has in the past. God wants us to give generously—not just with money but with time and talents, too. God wants us to give, not because it’s expected of us or simply to fill a need, but cheerfully and with love because we have so much to share.

Stewardship isn’t just about paying the bills on time. Stewardship means taking care of the things that have been entrusted to you. It means using them where they will do the most good and passing them on to the next generation. It means recognizing that in the end, everything belongs to God. Including ourselves.

If you have any questions about Christianity, please comment and I will answer them.

Be still, and know that I am God.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you– you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6:25-34)

“Be still, and know that I am God!” (Psalm 46:10)

It seems like everyone’s worried about something these days. If you’re not worrying about the economy, you’re worried about politics. If you’re not worrying about politics, you’re worrying about the environment or the world hunger crisis or international relations or your health or the way kids these days behave or the way adults just don’t understand or your job or your spouse/significant other or …. the list is endless. We work frantically to try and fix whatever problems we think are fixable, or work frantically to try and ignore the ones we think aren’t. We try to drown out our worries in work or play. We get so caught up in our worries that we don’t have room for anything else, and that takes a toll not just on our mental and spiritual well-being, but on our physical well-being.

Here’s the thing: we don’t have to worry, and we shouldn’t worry. When we worry, when we turn problems over and over in our head and agonize over what can or can’t be done to fix them, we enclose our minds and souls until they are only big enough for the problem we’re worrying about. We don’t leave room for God to work in us and through us. The fate of the world does not rest on our shoulders alone, but on God’s as well. Things will not always go well. But whether things go well or badly, God is always with us, and he’ll take care of us if we let him. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do whatever we can to solve our own problems, but it does mean that the problems shouldn’t consume our attention, and when we fail it’s not the end of the world. Do what you can, and trust God–in whose care the entire world rests, including you and me and everyone else–to take care of the rest.

When you find yourself worrying, don’t give in to the temptation to frantic action. Don’t give in to the temptation to turn your worries over and over in your mind. Instead, stop and take a deep breath, and remember that God cares for the world and everything in it. In the words of the Psalm, be still and know that God is God. Then take time to pray or meditate. Turn your worries over to God to deal with. Find something to be grateful for, something to rejoice over, and lift that up to the Lord. Then ask God for guidance and help dealing with whatever it is you’re worried about. Then act.